.TH PCRE2_SERIALIZE_DECODE 3 "27 June 2018" "PCRE2 10.32"
.SH NAME
PCRE2 - Perl-compatible regular expressions (revised API)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.rs
.sp
.B #include <pcre2.h>
.PP
.nf
.B int32_t pcre2_serialize_decode(pcre2_code **\fIcodes\fP,
.B "  int32_t \fInumber_of_codes\fP, const uint8_t *\fIbytes\fP,"
.B "  pcre2_general_context *\fIgcontext\fP);"
.fi
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.rs
.sp
This function decodes a serialized set of compiled patterns back into a list of
individual patterns. This is possible only on a host that is running the same
version of PCRE2, with the same code unit width, and the host must also have
the same endianness, pointer width and PCRE2_SIZE type. The arguments for
\fBpcre2_serialize_decode()\fP are:
.sp
  \fIcodes\fP            pointer to a vector in which to build the list
  \fInumber_of_codes\fP  number of slots in the vector
  \fIbytes\fP            the serialized byte stream
  \fIgcontext\fP         pointer to a general context or NULL
.sp
The \fIbytes\fP argument must point to a block of data that was originally
created by \fBpcre2_serialize_encode()\fP, though it may have been saved on
disc or elsewhere in the meantime. If there are more codes in the serialized
data than slots in the list, only those compiled patterns that will fit are
decoded. The yield of the function is the number of decoded patterns, or one of
the following negative error codes:
.sp
  PCRE2_ERROR_BADDATA   \fInumber_of_codes\fP is zero or less
  PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC  mismatch of id bytes in \fIbytes\fP
  PCRE2_ERROR_BADMODE   mismatch of variable unit size or PCRE version
  PCRE2_ERROR_NOMEMORY  memory allocation failed
  PCRE2_ERROR_NULL      \fIcodes\fP or \fIbytes\fP is NULL
.sp
PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC may mean that the data is corrupt, or that it was compiled
on a system with different endianness.
.P
There is a complete description of the PCRE2 native API in the
.\" HREF
\fBpcre2api\fP
.\"
page and a description of the serialization functions in the
.\" HREF
\fBpcre2serialize\fP
.\"
page.
